“The Talk“ is a series on sex, love, and relationships.
“Life Guard”, latest message in “The Talk” series. In “Life Guard” I talk about the Magician and how he tries to fool us into bad decisions by causing us to:
These world-class athletes according to their website “live by a code. A pledge to themselves and everyone else. Protect this House. I will.”
This is an awesome spot. And even if “protecting this house” in this case is simply about winning a game or promoting a brand, it definitely gets the juices flowing.
It makes me want to get in the gym, lift some weights, get out and run.
But it also challenges me.
Because who is “protecting” God’s House?
When indiffference and apathy are the too common response to the things of God, when the lifestyles of followers of Christ mirror the lifestyles of that don’t claim Him, when we would just as often spend a day at the lake rather than in the presence of God, who is protecting God’s House?
The psalmist in the above scripture says “zeal for Your House consumes me.” What this means is that the purposes of God, the ideas of God, the values of God dominated His person. It was like a consuming fire in the writer’s soul.
When is the last time that could be said about us?
When is the last time we said, “I Will”?
Things like:
I Will be broken over a broken generation
I Will pray with passion for those to whom Jesus is a stranger.
I will serve others with loving generosity knowing that my reward is in heaven.
I Will see the world with an eternal perspective.
I Will use every resource I have to pursue the purpose of Jesus for my life.
I Will not be satisfied with mediocrity but will give my best to achieve His best.
I Will love Jesus with all my heart, mind, soul, and strength.
I Will live a pure and holy life before Jesus.
I Will hold nothing back.
I Will live as if Heaven is my Home and that Hell is real.
I Will never quit.
Let’s be a generation that commits to “protect” His house. Let’s be a generation that not only says “I Will”, but “We Will.”
Tiffany and I have been watching the NBA Playoffs this week.
Though my team is not represented (Sacramento Kings were not eligible this year!), I love basketball. Conversely, Tiffany’s team (the Los Angeles Lakers) are playoff eliglible. This year, her team is better than my team (actually has been for almost…well forever).
And she lets me know it.
She is a very loud, sometimes obnoxious, completely biased fan.
Last night she was especially riled up during the Lakers loss to the Oklahoma Thunder.
Complaining about Pau Gasol.
Complaining about Ron Artest.
Complaining about the rebounding.
Complaining about the referees.
But despite all of her shouting, her team still lost (above is a picture of the closing moments).
Sometimes, in spite of all of our planning we still lose.
We can have huge vision, we can pray, we can strategize, etc.
But nobody wins every time, all of the time.
So when we lose, when we encounter a setback, how do we get back in the winning column?
How can we bounce back?
Here are a few suggestions:
1. Learn from the Loss-Take the time to understand why things didn’t turn out according to plan.
2. Get Back to Basics-Revisit the reason we set out on the journey in the first place.
3. See the Big Picture: Rather than fixate on a temporary defeat, focus on the desired destination.
4. Tweak your Strategy: After Learning, Getting Back to Basics, and seeing the Big Picture, we must develop a revised strategy for the next game.
Setbacks can become set-ups if we respond like winners when we lose.
Latest message in “The Talk” our series on sex, love, and relationships here at Renaissance Church. While looking at the words of Apostle Paul to the Corinthian Church we look at what it means to be the “Body of Christ”.
The Mad Hatter: [Points to Alice’s heart] In there.
Like Alice we have, “lost our muchness”.
Lost our moxie, our courage, our imagination. We have stopped hoping, dreaming, and believing.
Resigned to a hopeless, dreamless, faithless world we do our best to convince others to live there with us. Instead of inspiring others into “muchness“, we lead them into leastness. Having allowed ourselves to be made small, we do our very best to shrink others.
I had a conversation with high-school senior a few weeks ago. As is my custom with any high-school upperclass student, I asked what she was going to do after she graduated.
Her face crinkled up.
“Maybe I will get a job.”
“Maybe I will go to school.”
“Maybe I will…”
I interrupted.
“What do you want to do?”
“Hmmmm. Maybe sports medicine.”
“Cool. What school do you want to go to?”
“I don’t know.”
“Okay. Let me ask you this: If I gave you 10 million dollars right now, what would you do? Where would you go? What is your dream?”
“Oh. Maybe I would go to UCLA or University of Arizona. Then I could work in someone’s practice.”
“What if you had YOUR OWN PRACTICE? What if you had a huge sports complex with your name on the front and you helped train and rehab the best athletes from all over the world? Wouldn’t that be cool?”
“Yeah, it would.”
I smiled back, but she didn’t seem too convinced. Recalling the conversation, it appeared that the legions of leastness had already gotten to her. Had already crushed her hopes, sabotaged her dreams, and broken her beliefs.
Somewhere along the way she lost her muchness.
So I tried to give her some of mine.
I’m still hoping, dreaming, and believing in the impossible. Still jotting down ideas and scribbling plans that have never been seen before or heard of at all.
For many of these impossible dreams I am:
Too old, too young, too poor, too little known, too this or too that.
And many of these impossible dreams are:
Too wild, too crazy, too dangerous, too risky, too unprecedented, too strange, too odd, too expensive, too this or too that.
But I refuse to listen to the legions of leastness.
Their favorite way to start a sentence is, “That is too…”, and then they fill in the blank with a word designed to steal muchness.
But I’m determined to keep my muchness.
And I am hoping that you are determined to keeping your muchness too.
“You’re mad, bonkers, off your head! But I’ll tell you a secret: All the best people are.”
This 2002 film is about a father and husband whose son is diagnosed with an enlarged heart who then finds out he cannot receive a transplant because HMO insurance won’t cover it. After receiving this information, he decides to take a hospital full of patients hostage until the hospital puts his son’s name on the recipient’s list.
Right before John decides to take the law into his own hands, he has a telephone conversation with his wife.
At the height of desperation she says, “They are releasing him, now you need to do something! DO YOU HEAR ME! DO SOMETHING!”
John takes these words to heart and really does something.
And truly, all of us must do the same.
Do something.
No, we shouldn’t take people hostage to get what we want.
But we should do something about the dream that sits inside us.
We need to make the call, send the e-mail, register for the class, write the manuscript, pen the song, take the trip, or do whatever we haven’t been doing that we need to be doing to fulfill God’s plan for our lives.
Stop waiting, procrastinating, and making excuses.
On and on the rain will fall
Like tears from a star like tears from a star
On and on the rain will say
How fragile we are how fragile we are
How fragile we are how fragile we are
-from the song Fragile by Sting
“Whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.”
-James 4:14
In the past few weeks we have been reminded of the fragility of life.
“The Talk“ is a series on sex, love, and relationships.
“Life Guard”, latest message in “The Talk” series. In “Life Guard” I talk about the Magician and how he tries to fool us into bad decisions by causing us to:
1. Question God’s Word.
2. Question God’s Character
3. Make decisions without God’s influence.
Click here to check it out.
Posted in Relationships, The Church, Transformation | No Comments »
“…zeal for your house consumes me…”
-Ps. 69:9
Under Armor Athletic Apparel has a commercial that has been airing throughout the NBA Playoffs. It is called, “I Will”. The theme to this piece to communicate a sense of ownership, passion, and hunger to win.
These world-class athletes according to their website “live by a code. A pledge to themselves and everyone else. Protect this House. I will.”
This is an awesome spot. And even if “protecting this house” in this case is simply about winning a game or promoting a brand, it definitely gets the juices flowing.
It makes me want to get in the gym, lift some weights, get out and run.
But it also challenges me.
Because who is “protecting” God’s House?
When indiffference and apathy are the too common response to the things of God, when the lifestyles of followers of Christ mirror the lifestyles of that don’t claim Him, when we would just as often spend a day at the lake rather than in the presence of God, who is protecting God’s House?
The psalmist in the above scripture says “zeal for Your House consumes me.” What this means is that the purposes of God, the ideas of God, the values of God dominated His person. It was like a consuming fire in the writer’s soul.
When is the last time that could be said about us?
When is the last time we said, “I Will”?
Things like:
I Will be broken over a broken generation
I Will pray with passion for those to whom Jesus is a stranger.
I will serve others with loving generosity knowing that my reward is in heaven.
I Will see the world with an eternal perspective.
I Will use every resource I have to pursue the purpose of Jesus for my life.
I Will not be satisfied with mediocrity but will give my best to achieve His best.
I Will love Jesus with all my heart, mind, soul, and strength.
I Will live a pure and holy life before Jesus.
I Will hold nothing back.
I Will live as if Heaven is my Home and that Hell is real.
I Will never quit.
Let’s be a generation that commits to “protect” His house. Let’s be a generation that not only says “I Will”, but “We Will.”
We Will Protect His House.
Amen.
Posted in The Church, The Future, Leadership, Sports | No Comments »
“…little did he know it would cost him his life.”
-Prov. 7:22
This weekend I shared two stories with Renaissance Church about people that didn’t follow directions. They both interacted closely with zoo animals.
Too closely, really.
The posted signs warned both of them not to.
But they didn’t listen.
One teenager just had to taunt the tigers.
One man couldn’t resist climbing into the elephant enclosure.
They ignored the signs.
And it cost them their lives.
When we don’t follow God’s directions, ignore His warnings, we expose ourselves to great danger.
It could cost us…everything.
Posted in The Church, Discipleship | No Comments »
Tiffany and I have been watching the NBA Playoffs this week.
Though my team is not represented (Sacramento Kings were not eligible this year!), I love basketball. Conversely, Tiffany’s team (the Los Angeles Lakers) are playoff eliglible. This year, her team is better than my team (actually has been for almost…well forever).
And she lets me know it.
She is a very loud, sometimes obnoxious, completely biased fan.
Last night she was especially riled up during the Lakers loss to the Oklahoma Thunder.
Complaining about Pau Gasol.
Complaining about Ron Artest.
Complaining about the rebounding.
Complaining about the referees.
But despite all of her shouting, her team still lost (above is a picture of the closing moments).
Sometimes, in spite of all of our planning we still lose.
We can have huge vision, we can pray, we can strategize, etc.
But nobody wins every time, all of the time.
So when we lose, when we encounter a setback, how do we get back in the winning column?
How can we bounce back?
Here are a few suggestions:
1. Learn from the Loss-Take the time to understand why things didn’t turn out according to plan.
2. Get Back to Basics-Revisit the reason we set out on the journey in the first place.
3. See the Big Picture: Rather than fixate on a temporary defeat, focus on the desired destination.
4. Tweak your Strategy: After Learning, Getting Back to Basics, and seeing the Big Picture, we must develop a revised strategy for the next game.
Setbacks can become set-ups if we respond like winners when we lose.
Posted in Leadership, Sports | No Comments »
If I get on American Idol, Survivor, The Apprentice, America’s Next Top Model and someone notices me…then I can get my “Big Break”.
We live in the generation of the “Big Break”.
The thing is, this mentality is so pervasive that we have begun to think that God works this way.
If we just do the right stuff for long enough, well enough, hard enough then God will take notice…and He will give us our Big Break.
But when our service is tied to our Big Break ambitions, we are not really serving.
At least not anyone but ourselves.
True service to God is achieved when we recognize that we have already gotten our Big Break:
Jesus Himself.
“But not so among you; on the contrary, he who is greatest among you, let him be as the younger, and he who governs as he who serves.”
-Luke 22:26
Posted in Media/Culture, Worship, Discipleship | No Comments »
Latest message in “The Talk” our series on sex, love, and relationships here at Renaissance Church. While looking at the words of Apostle Paul to the Corinthian Church we look at what it means to be the “Body of Christ”.
To listen or download, click here.
Posted in The Church, Media/Culture | 1 Comment »
Mad Hatter: You’ve lost your “muchness”
Alice Kingsley: My “muchness”?
The Mad Hatter: [Points to Alice’s heart] In there.
Like Alice we have, “lost our muchness”.
Lost our moxie, our courage, our imagination. We have stopped hoping, dreaming, and believing.
Resigned to a hopeless, dreamless, faithless world we do our best to convince others to live there with us. Instead of inspiring others into “muchness“, we lead them into leastness. Having allowed ourselves to be made small, we do our very best to shrink others.
I had a conversation with high-school senior a few weeks ago. As is my custom with any high-school upperclass student, I asked what she was going to do after she graduated.
Her face crinkled up.
“Maybe I will get a job.”
“Maybe I will go to school.”
“Maybe I will…”
I interrupted.
“What do you want to do?”
“Hmmmm. Maybe sports medicine.”
“Cool. What school do you want to go to?”
“I don’t know.”
“Okay. Let me ask you this: If I gave you 10 million dollars right now, what would you do? Where would you go? What is your dream?”
“Oh. Maybe I would go to UCLA or University of Arizona. Then I could work in someone’s practice.”
“What if you had YOUR OWN PRACTICE? What if you had a huge sports complex with your name on the front and you helped train and rehab the best athletes from all over the world? Wouldn’t that be cool?”
“Yeah, it would.”
I smiled back, but she didn’t seem too convinced. Recalling the conversation, it appeared that the legions of leastness had already gotten to her. Had already crushed her hopes, sabotaged her dreams, and broken her beliefs.
Somewhere along the way she lost her muchness.
So I tried to give her some of mine.
I’m still hoping, dreaming, and believing in the impossible. Still jotting down ideas and scribbling plans that have never been seen before or heard of at all.
For many of these impossible dreams I am:
Too old, too young, too poor, too little known, too this or too that.
And many of these impossible dreams are:
Too wild, too crazy, too dangerous, too risky, too unprecedented, too strange, too odd, too expensive, too this or too that.
But I refuse to listen to the legions of leastness.
Their favorite way to start a sentence is, “That is too…”, and then they fill in the blank with a word designed to steal muchness.
But I’m determined to keep my muchness.
And I am hoping that you are determined to keeping your muchness too.
“You’re mad, bonkers, off your head! But I’ll tell you a secret: All the best people are.”
-Charles Kingsley
Posted in Media/Culture, The Future, Leadership, Creativity/Innovation, Dream Awake | 1 Comment »
There is a scene in ‘John Q’ that always gets me.
This 2002 film is about a father and husband whose son is diagnosed with an enlarged heart who then finds out he cannot receive a transplant because HMO insurance won’t cover it. After receiving this information, he decides to take a hospital full of patients hostage until the hospital puts his son’s name on the recipient’s list.
Right before John decides to take the law into his own hands, he has a telephone conversation with his wife.
At the height of desperation she says, “They are releasing him, now you need to do something! DO YOU HEAR ME! DO SOMETHING!”
John takes these words to heart and really does something.
And truly, all of us must do the same.
Do something.
No, we shouldn’t take people hostage to get what we want.
But we should do something about the dream that sits inside us.
We need to make the call, send the e-mail, register for the class, write the manuscript, pen the song, take the trip, or do whatever we haven’t been doing that we need to be doing to fulfill God’s plan for our lives.
Stop waiting, procrastinating, and making excuses.
Do something.
Posted in Leadership, Dream Awake, Transformation | 1 Comment »
What amazing adventure will go on today?
Where is going to take you?
Who are you going to meet?
What are going to see?
How brave will you be?
How much faith will you need?
What amazing adventure will you go on today?
Posted in The Future, Creativity/Innovation, Dream Awake | No Comments »
One of my favorite writers Seth Godin, often speaks about the power of ‘noticing’.
It is this power of ‘noticing’ that gives us the ability to see common things in uncommon ways.
One day I took a picture of these 2 signs.
One sign has a guy walking with a surfboard, the other just has a guy walking.
I wasn’t sure what the 2 signs were saying to me, or if they were saying anything to me.
But if I hadn’t taken the time to notice, there wouldn’t be any opportunity for insight.
Most see what is common as common.
But some of us see what is common with uncommon sight.
It is this “uncommon sight” that allows those that change the world to…well…change the world.
To change the world (or our circumstance), we must change the way we see.
Posted in Leadership, Creativity/Innovation, World Change | No Comments »
On and on the rain will fall
Like tears from a star like tears from a star
On and on the rain will say
How fragile we are how fragile we are
How fragile we are how fragile we are
-from the song Fragile by Sting
“Whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.”
-James 4:14
In the past few weeks we have been reminded of the fragility of life.
A mine explosion in West Virginia. A plane crash that kills the President of Poland. Mud slides in Brazil(above picture). A fatal head-on collision in Sacramento.
And there are more. Many more.
Too many to name.
While we know that life is short, and tomorrow isn’t promised to anyone…we often live as if those realities aren’t true.
We make extremely short-term decisions while acting as if we have all the time in the world.
But the truth is that our world is running out of time.
In a moment we could be standing before God, giving an account of our days.
In a moment this life could be over.
In a moment we could be standing in eternity.
In a moment everything that we know could be a thing of the past.
In a moment.
Somewhere along the way we have lost our vision of eternity.
Because we have lost our vision, our moments have lost their value.
When we understand the fragility of the moments we have, we learn to value our moments.
Question: How are you valuing your moments?
Posted in Media/Culture, The Future | No Comments »