Today is July 4th, it’s kind of a big deal here in America. For those of you readers who are not from the states, this is the time when we eat, eat, and do some more eating then shoot fire. Okay, it’s a tad more than that. It’s a time where we celebrate the conception of our country, a country that chose to be free rather than held back by another person. To this day we have soldiers that continue to fight for freedom, because we all want to be free. It’s hard wired into all people, we want to be free. Freedom is one of those tricky ideas, too much freedom can lead us into trouble, the first sin by Adam and Eve was caused by their desire to live independently from God. At the same time, God doesn’t want us to be mindless followers, so, what exactly should we do. The solution is that we live in freedom by dependent on Christ. That’s the beauty of our awesome creator, when we choose to follow him and his ways, he gives freedom unlike anything else. We have been called to live in freedom.
You Make the Difference
Vulnerability moment: Sometimes I don’t feel like I’m making an impact. I love serving and do it each week because I love speaking life into others, but there are moments where I wonder if any of what I do means anything to anyone. I know that this isn’t true, when we serve others we make the difference, but it isn’t always easy to feel that way. I think the same is true for you. In your job, in your home, at the church where you volunteer; you have a hard time believing that people actually see the difference you make and the skills you bring to the table. We can feel unnoticed, wanting to be given a thank you or a simple thought from someone confirming that you do matter, but we don’t always get that. Now before I go any further, I want to make it clear that this isn’t a post for me trying to get anything from, I simply am trying to be vulnerable because I think we get into places where we feel this way. We have an active enemy that is trying to twist your thoughts to make you feel worthless, powerless, and alone. I want to help you win at life because you have a creator that says you are worth it. Your life has value. You make the difference.
Pieces
There is something I have noticed in the bible. Over the past year I have been reading the works of Paul and focusing in on the wisdom that he had when it comes to a relationship with Christ. He is such a powerful writer, his letters went to each place where he addressed key aspects of their life that they needed to re-order. Each book is a letter, which caused me to stop and think, I love writing (I mean, why else would I do this each week!) and often I will analyze how another writer works because I want to grow my skills. My brain started thinking about Paul, and there is something that he does in each letter, each book that he authored in the bible, which have one common device. In each letter, he opens with a personal greeting to each of the churches, and ends with a final charge for that church. The content is different, but the opening and closing are always intentionally the same. He personally calls out to each church and ends with a prayer over them and gives them credit for the work that they are doing and continue to do. You see, I think Paul knew something very important, something that we as leaders in our communities need to understand and realize, the pieces make up the puzzle.
Family Factor
We are not made to be alone. This is a truth that God said about us in the very beginning. “It is not good for man to be alone (Genesis 2:18a).” That’s pretty straight forward, something I love about the teachings within the bible, simple ideas that radically change lives. I’ve been thinking a lot about recently, the idea that we are not made to be alone, and because of that, God gives us a family. This then lead me to think about what exactly a family is. Sure one way to view it could be your direct biological family, but I think there is more to it than that. One of the best definitions of family that I found while researching this idea was simply this, a person or people related to one and so to be treated with a special loyalty or intimacy. To be treated with special loyalty or intimacy. How powerful is that? Family is a factor that each of us needs in our lives, a community that is loyal to each other and can be there for us in times of need. The traditional idea of what a family is has changed. I used to think of the Norman Rockwell Freedom from Want painting, the one of the turkey dinner, all the family gathered around with big smiles. This simply isn’t the same, family goes through hard times. Families aren’t all white picket fence home owners, we are unique and different. We have families of divorce, children who have been victims of abuse, families that have experienced the death of a spouse, homes being combined after parents re-marry, and countless other looks of family. My family has stayed together, but we have seen what addiction can cause within the family and the death of grandparents. In these hard times of family it can be hard to see the essential factor in family, but family is so much more, and there is always hope when God is a centerpiece in your life.
The Power of Fun
I want to talk about something very serious today. This is something that has been on my heart, and I think many people are struggling from the lack of this important ability. It plagues many and causes hardship and tension when it is not present. I’m talking about fun. Did you like how I tried to make it sound like I was going to talk about something really heavy and sad? I thought it was pretty funny (Hey! It’s like I’m going to talk about fun and made a funny joke!). I want to talk about the importance of fun. We face a lot of tough things in life, things that make it hard for us to continue and want to run away and become a recluse. We can’t do that, the world needs each and every one of us. We all play a vital role in this world, it’s the reason we were created by God! One of the strongest weapons we have in our arsenal is fun, yet most of us try to take the world way too seriously. Having fun creates an open culture in your life, meaning, you find joy even in the hardest circumstances. Even though we face hardship, we can praise God and have fun. Psalm 149:1-5 says, “Praise the Lord. Sing to the Lord a new song, his praise in the assembly of his faithful people… Let them praise his name with dancing and make music to him with tambourine and harp. For the Lord takes delight in his people; he crowns the humble with victory. Let his faithful people rejoice in this honor and sing for joy on their beds.”
The Blessed Life
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about what it means to be blessed. Being blessed means that you have been given a new chance, something greater, you are holy. It’s a word that means you have been given all you need by a father looking out for you, and to be honest, I don’t always feel this way. I think a lot of us don’t feel this way. We are never content with what we have it seems like, we are always looking to the next big thing, the next adventure, the next purchase to satisfy the never ending craving of life. We never look at what we have and see what God has given us, and sometimes, we don’t feel like God has blessed us. We all go through struggles in life, I feel like I say this each week, but it’s true. We face pain that we never thought we would, but even in moments of pain we are blessed. We are blessed and God has given us all we need.
Invincible
One of the biggest lies we are told is that with we can overcome anything if we put our mind to it. We struggle and the world around us tells us to just power through it, that you are the only one holding you back. Life has us face some of the hardest struggles and deepest hurts that it throws our way, and we feel helpless. We feel like we should be stronger, that we should be invincible, especially as a believer we feel like we shouldn’t be struggling. We all struggle, yet we feel like we are the only ones. I know for me I look at others around me and feel like they have unlocked the secret to being invincible. Then there’s the other side, when life is going great. We aren’t having any issues, life seems to finally be at peace, and we start to feel invincible. This is what I like to call the “invincibility curse.” I know, it sounds pretty cool, I came up with that on my own. Okay, back down to earth. I like to call it this because we all have faced one or both of the symptoms to this curse. We either face situations where we are frustrated by the fact that we aren’t invincible, or we let our guard down when we are in times of peace. The reality of this curse is the fact that we are striving for invincibility, rather than relying on God at all times in our life. We have made invincibility an idol, losing sight of what really matters.
Move Forward
Let’s face it, it’s hard to chase after our dreams. The Disney method of believing seems to be impossible. We all have desires and callings for greater things, and God has designed us to have this passion burning within us. We start the race, but life hits us with everything its’ got. We face pain from broken relationships, heartache from the loss of people dear to us, and the sting from words spoken against us. For me, I’ve experienced a lot of it, just like you have. Many times I don’t want to keep running into the future. I’m afraid of the pain and the unknown that will come. Fear creeps in. Fear always creeps in. For me, I want to be a writer and empower leaders of the next generation, but that road is unclear. I serve any chance I can and intern with youth, but that fear likes to creep in and tell me my dreams are unattainable. The same is true for all of us, we have different dreams and different places we wish to end up, but we are held back from our pursuit of it. I’m a visual type person, so when I picture the idea of chasing after a dream, I think of people running in a race trying to attain the medal. I think God is a visual person too, because he inspired the unknown writer of Hebrews to think of the same metaphor in chapter 12. Verse 1-2 says, “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” I love this verse because it revealed something to me that I want to share today. It caused me to think about three things that hold us back from moving forward. I’m going to call these the three viruses that hold you back, I like the word virus because it makes me think of some of the worst things in this world that keep us from living well, and these are nasty traits that will hold you back.
Speaking Truth in Love, Fighting the Curse of the Manipulator
I think leaders have a problem. It’s a problem that is very easy to slip into once anyone steps into leadership. It has many names, the most notable being the “toxic boss syndrome,” but it stems from the problem of being a manipulator. We are all at the risk of falling into this type of behavior because it’s one of the biggest ways the enemy tries to get us to fall. I’m continuing this series on leadership, the past few weeks I’ve been looking at what makes a good leader from the bible. This is designed to help you, because I think that everyone has the capacity and capability to be a leader, and being a leader is hard. We are attacked in every direction, people will start to tear you down to see you fail, and we have the danger of being a manipulator. I think we’ve all at one point in time had to work for a boss or volunteer under a boss, notice that I’m not saying leader. A boss is someone with power over another individual, their primary objective is to use what you have to make them look better. A leader is someone that sees the potential in those under them and provides them with opportunity to rise above, even if it means sending them out of your ministry. This seems backwards, but when we equip leaders that are looking up to us, we help change the world. Imagine what would happen if we never pushed people to do more, to stay complacent in their lives. What a sad world that would be! God calls us to be leaders who speak truth in love, not bosses that manipulate for their own gain.
What I Learned at Orange Conference 2016: Monday is Coming
This past week I had the opportunity for the second time to go to the Orange Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. The conference is a next generation conference, designed to equip and empower next gen leaders for their ministry. It gave tools and new ideas that could be incorporated into ministry, and I loved it. It was such a refreshing week to be able to feel empowered about my passion for reaching the next generation and equipping next gen leaders to be the best they can be. The theme of the conference was, “Monday is Coming,” which was all about how we need to be intentional about the way we partner with kids and students throughout the week. So often we can get caught up in what we do Sunday, making sure everything is just right and that we have the best experience, we forget that the students have an entire week without us. We should shift our thinking to the idea that Sunday is pre-Monday. The first speaker of the night was Jon Acuff, and awesome speaker and writer that I look up to, and he made the point that people visit on Sunday, but they live in Monday. The church as a whole often fails at this idea, we get so caught up with programs and systems we forget that these people are only here for a short time in the morning, but they have an entire week filled with life, and life gets hard. It’s easy to forget that people have lives outside of what we see on Sunday, we experience death, failure, and heartache; we experience Monday. Everyone faces these trials and pain, especially kids and students. I know that they experience it, because I experienced it. I am so thankful for my home church of Daystar, because the leaders there know how important the week is. The thing I love about it is that it’s a place where the leaders care what happens in the lives of the people, I can about the lives of the students in my small group. Sunday is a good thing, but the value of walking with someone through their Monday can change their life forever.
Joshua Writes 