Humble and Grateful

Sunday was a pretty amazing day at ADBC.

We finished out the messsage series The Root with all time highs in worship attendance (1231) and Bible Community attendance (887) for a non-Easter Sunday.

We had a great launch to two new groups - a Crown Financial group and a Parenting group, both meeting at 11:00, drew 40 people between them.

About 70 of our Bible Community Leaders came back Sunday night for training - good leaders know they need training!

I see many signs that God is at work in our midst. I feel humble and grateful that God is using ADBC to help many people take their next step!

No One Understands

The doctor says, “This will only sting a little.” How does he know?

The reporter says, “I understand how you feel.” Oh, have you been robbed too?

The teacher says, “This test is not that hard.” Really? How did you do on it when you were in second grade?

The boss says, “This job should only take an hour.” It would, too, if you didn’t have to do four other urgent tasks.

Your parents say, “Don’t cry honey. There are other fish in the sea.” Who wants a fish? Your heart is broken because your boyfriend dumped you.

People at a funeral say to the family, “Don’t cry, dear. You know your mother wouldn’t want you to cry.” So you’re saying my mother would want me to be un-affected by her death?

Ever get the feeling that no one understands you? People make assumptions about your pain threshold, your feelings, your abilities, your passions, your hurts. But does anyone really understand your heart?

In our heads we know God understands us, but we are a little fearful that He understands us too well. When the fear finds a voice, it usually says something like, “What if God uses His knowledge of you against you? What if He demands more? What if He asks you to do something you don’t want to do?”

God’s understanding has a way of going straight through our heart. If we listen to Him, we’ll find out His knowledge is not something to threaten us. Instead, His knowledge is a gift to us, to help see what we cannot see, understand what we cannot know, and express what cannot be fathomed.

This Sunday, I launch a series of messages based on Psalm 139. I hope you will be here through out February as we talk about Straight Through the Heart.

Expanding Life...

Once upon a time, there was a man who set out to be happy.
He noted it was a good thing to be smart. So he went to one of the finest colleges in the land, got a graduate degree, got another, and finally became an expert in an area of knowledge. People wrote him from all over the world to find out what he thought in his area of expertise. He was famous – but it didn’t really make him happy.
All his education cost money, so he decided he would have to parlay his academic expertise into something lucrative. He formed a company, got some customers, hired some people, and soon had the cash rolling in. Before long he was buying another house, a collector’s car, having clothes custom made. He enjoyed the money, but it took a lot of his time. Business meetings, getting with his accountant, doing lunch with his broker – all took hours out of his schedule. The money and the means to make it crowded out the rest of life. He wasn’t really happy.
He was a moral man – he didn’t fool around, didn’t undercut his opposition in business, and didn’t cheat on his taxes. But even his good conduct left him feeling hollow.
One day he heard about a teacher – someone who had it all together. The restlessness stirred his heart one more time and off he went in search of the answer to emptiness. He thought about how he would phrase his question and decided he didn’t want to be too vulnerable. So he re-framed it in religious terms – How could he find eternal life?
When the teacher heard the question, he told him the obvious – do the right thing. The man said he had done this for a long time. Then the teacher looked at him with compassion – and told him he had missed one of life’s most important skills. To learn that skill, he would have to give – give away his fortune, his reputation, his business – and follow him.
He couldn’t do it. He walked away. He died unhappy, because his life was too small.
And the teacher said, “There goes another man who makes something doable, undoable – because he thinks it’s like a camel going through the eye of a needle. He thinks it can’t be done. He thinks too small.”
Are you thinking too small about your life? Are you saying things can’t be done? What is God’s plan for expanding your life?
That’s what I’ll be talking about Sunday.

Sunday Download

Another gray rainy start to a Sunday, yet you came. I am so grateful!

I want to thank Jim Arneman and Jock Hendricks for hanging the trees in the worship center (if you weren’t here this morning, you need to come by for a look). Their work is helping the message series The Root be memorable.

People ask why we use visuals and props. We do so because we are continuing in the tradition of Jesus - who preached outside and often used visual signs to illustrate his point. We do so because we live in a visual culture - that’s why websites like iTunes feature video and YouTube exists. We do so because we want to make messages memorable - frankly, I will never forget being able to touch tree root while talking about the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.

As I shared with you this morning, sometimes the best way to understand a passage is to read it forward and apply it backwards. I think it is the be way to understand 1 Timothy 6:6-10:

We have to ask ourselves if a love of money ever interferes with our faith? Does it ever bring pain to our lives or the lives of others (v. 10).

Every desire - good and bad - has an unintended and unforeseen consequence. If you are person who wants to get rich, you have tied your life to a sinking cause. Beware of the thought that you don’t want to get rich - you just want to be comfortable; that’s a way to justify our financial behavior (v. 9).

Challenge yourself to define your life’s purpose and then explore what contentment mean for you (v.8).

Recognize the reality that whatever you own in this world, you will leave (v. 7). Then challenge yourself to ask “Why am I buying this, if I know I will leave it behind when I die?”

Finally, apply the truth of v. 6 - the best investment, with the greatest profit, is to live a life devoted to God with contentment. Open your wallet and make a promise to God that you will never again look in it for hope, security, encouragment, or peace.

Your Money Tree

You have a money tree. It has limbs with fruit and leaves. It has a trunk that stores energy. It has roots.

Whatever income you have is absorbed by the roots. The money you receive flows up above the ground to the trunk, ready to be distributed to the rest of the tree.

This is where your money tree is different that a real tree. A real tree has a God given ability to distribute its resources of nutrients and water to all the parts of the tree. It knows what it needs to do to be healthy. People, however, react differently to the resources that come into their lives.

Some people hoard what comes from the root. They store it up in the trunk and wait. This storing looks different for different people. Some people store it up in stocks and investments (think Warren Buffett); others store it up in insurance policies (they are worth more dead than alive and pray the relatives don’t find out); and still others store it up in real estate (preferably at the lake or the beach).

Other people push what the roots take in right out to the fruit – they want to spend. They never met a sale they didn’t like. Christmas is their favorite time because they get to spend in the name of giving. They have to rent storage units to hold all their stuff. They may have closets full of shoes or storage sheds full of fishing tackle.

We’ve all heard the quote, “Money is the root of all evil.” Many people think that quote comes from the Bible. It doesn’t. It does say, “The love of money is the root of all evil.”

What goes on at the root is important. Our emotions attach a meaning to money that matters. When our heart believes that money will provide nurture, security, joy, happiness, affection, and self-worth – our heart is wrong. It is from this wrong calculation that causes evil in our money tree.

Starting this Sunday, I want to talk about the root in your money tree and mine.

Sunday Download

It was a foggy, gray, damp Sunday, the kind of day that makes you want to stay in and snuggle deeper in bed. I want you to know that I always appreciate you overcoming that temptation - 1160 + turned out for worship.

I laid out some specific next steps I want to our church to take and encourage you to take:

1. We are going to start four new groups to help people know community this year. If you are not in a group, please jump in and find your place.

2. We are encouraging you to read through the Bible in one year. You can pick up a Bible Reading Plan at the East or West Desk or the Church Office. We also want to encourage those of you who have not yet learned the joy of giving systematically to try giving for 3 straight weeks and see what character results you get. I believe giving, more than any other spiritual discipline, helps grow our character.

3. We are encouraging you to share - many of you took bags of candy to distribute as a New Year’s gift of encouragement.

4. Finally, as a church we are hoping to baptize 90 people in coming year. That is a healthy number - and with God’s help, we want to impact 90 people for Jesus in the year ahead.

I think God is going to do some amazing things at ADBC in the year ahead - I hope you are a part of them!

If Jesus Had A Kid Who Played Football

Rick Reilly is one of my favorite writers. Sports Illustrated hasn’t been the same since his column left the last page. Recently he posted this story on ESPN (http://sports.espn.go.com/espnmag/story?section=magazine&id=3789373):

“They played the oddest game in high school football history last month down in Grapevine, Texas.

It was Grapevine Faith vs. Gainesville State School and everything about it was upside down. For instance, when Gainesville came out to take the field, the Faith fans made a 40-yard spirit line for them to run through.

Did you hear that? The other team’s fans?

They even made a banner for players to crash through at the end. It said, “Go Tornadoes!” Which is also weird, because Faith is the Lions.

“I WOULDN’T EXPECT ANOTHER PARENT TO TELL SOMEBODY TO HIT THEIR KIDS. BUT THEY WANTED US TO!”

It was rivers running uphill and cats petting dogs. More than 200 Faith fans sat on the Gainesville side and kept cheering the Gainesville players on—by name.

“I never in my life thought I’d hear people cheering for us to hit their kids,” recalls Gainesville’s QB and middle linebacker, Isaiah. “I wouldn’t expect another parent to tell somebody to hit their kids. But they wanted us to!”

And even though Faith walloped them 33-14, the Gainesville kids were so happy that after the game they gave head coach Mark Williams a sideline squirt-bottle shower like he’d just won state. Gotta be the first Gatorade bath in history for an 0-9 coach.

But then you saw the 12 uniformed officers escorting the 14 Gainesville players off the field and two and two started to make four. They lined the players up in groups of five—handcuffs ready in their back pockets—and marched them to the team bus. That’s because Gainesville is a maximum-security correctional facility 75 miles north of Dallas. Every game it plays is on the road.

This all started when Faith’s head coach, Kris Hogan, wanted to do something kind for the Gainesville team. Faith had never played Gainesville, but he already knew the score. After all, Faith was 7-2 going into the game, Gainesville 0-8 with 2 TDs all year. Faith has 70 kids, 11 coaches, the latest equipment and involved parents. Gainesville has a lot of kids with convictions for drugs, assault and robbery—many of whose families had disowned them—wearing seven-year-old shoulder pads and ancient helmets.

So Hogan had this idea. What if half of our fans—for one night only—cheered for the other team? He sent out an email asking the Faithful to do just that. “Here’s the message I want you to send:” Hogan wrote. “You are just as valuable as any other person on planet Earth.”

Some people were naturally confused. One Faith player walked into Hogan’s office and asked, “Coach, why are we doing this?”

And Hogan said, “Imagine if you didn’t have a home life. Imagine if everybody had pretty much given up on you. Now imagine what it would mean for hundreds of people to suddenly believe in you.”

Next thing you know, the Gainesville Tornadoes were turning around on their bench to see something they never had before. Hundreds of fans. And actual cheerleaders!

“I thought maybe they were confused,” said Alex, a Gainesville lineman (only first names are released by the prison). “They started yelling ‘DEE-fense!’ when their team had the ball. I said, ‘What? Why they cheerin’ for us?’”

It was a strange experience for boys who most people cross the street to avoid. “We can tell people are a little afraid of us when we come to the games,” says Gerald, a lineman who will wind up doing more than three years. “You can see it in their eyes. They’re lookin’ at us like we’re criminals. But these people, they were yellin’ for us! By our names!”

Maybe it figures that Gainesville played better than it had all season, scoring the game’s last two touchdowns. Of course, this might be because Hogan put his third-string nose guard at safety and his third-string cornerback at defensive end. Still.

After the game, both teams gathered in the middle of the field to pray and that’s when Isaiah surprised everybody by asking to lead. “We had no idea what the kid was going to say,” remembers Coach Hogan. But Isaiah said this: “Lord, I don’t know how this happened, so I don’t know how to say thank You, but I never would’ve known there was so many people in the world that cared about us.”

And it was a good thing everybody’s heads were bowed because they might’ve seen Hogan wiping away tears.

As the Tornadoes walked back to their bus under guard, they each were handed a bag for the ride home—a burger, some fries, a soda, some candy, a Bible and an encouraging letter from a Faith player.

The Gainesville coach saw Hogan, grabbed him hard by the shoulders and said, “You’ll never know what your people did for these kids tonight. You’ll never, ever know.”

And as the bus pulled away, all the Gainesville players crammed to one side and pressed their hands to the window, staring at these people they’d never met before, watching their waves and smiles disappearing into the night.

Anyway, with the economy six feet under and Christmas running on about three and a half reindeer, it’s nice to know that one of the best presents you can give is still absolutely free.

Hope.”

What Rick didn’t tell us: Faith, as you may have guessed by it’s name is Christian School. This quote is taken from their website: “It is with great joy and an awesome sense of responsibility that the entire staff at Faith partner with parents in the Spiritual formation and develpment of their children.”

When too often Christian schools are a way of sheltering our kids from “bad kids,” it is great to see one Christian school acting just like Jesus would - loving the other team.

Rick Reilly is right - this does give us hope. But it shows us much more - grace

Should We Fear

The breeding ground for fear is anxiety. As the page turns from 2008 to 2009, it is a fertile field for fear.

The economy, naturally, is first on the minds of many. Delayed paychecks, vagueness about company plans, and layoffs are impacting the lives of neighbors, not just strangers. NPR reports that people are not buying this holiday season, because the economy doesn’t seem stable and secure.

Because we are a nation of spenders, not savers, our fears have shifted to a higher gear. If something happens to our incomes, we don’t have fat savings accounts to cushion the fall. People talk about getting upside down financially – owing more than they’re worth. Some of us aren’t just upside down – we’re tumbling. That out of control feeling makes us afraid.

These are not the only fears that strike us – the recent crime reports from our city have made some people reluctant to venture out in the evening, fearing an attack or a robbery. We’ve made the link between hard times and hard crime. We’re making sure doors are locked and valuables are hidden. We avoid the dark corners of the parking lot, drawn to the light, hoping for safety.

The odd thing is, all of us who know God, know exactly what He would say to our fears: Fear not! It is the one of the most repeated phrases in scripture – 144 times. How does God expect us to do this?

The cure for fear is simple – have something or someone in your life more powerful than your fear. When God says “fear not” it is an invitation to trust Him.

On the first Sunday of 2009, I’m going to be talking about “No Fear.”

I want to challenge our church not to respond to the world with fear, but with the confidence of faith. I want to challenge all of us to step past our fear and take a next step toward God

I will look forward to seeing each of you this Sunday for worship!

Whatever this next year holds for you, I hope you will remember who holds you. Fear not!