Transparency

The End of a Decade

All day long my mind has been replaying the last 10 years and all that has taken place in this decade.  I have married my wonderful wife, we have had 3 awesome children and we finally bought our first house almost two years ago. The past 10 years have been filled with great friends, though we don't get to seem them all as often as we would like, the relationships that we have developed has been so meaningful!

Professionally the last 10 years has been a rollercoaster, we have served at three different churches, two in the first half of the decade and 1 in the second half.  The first half was filled with transitions and a lot of challenging times and learning experiences.  The second half has been some of the best years of ministry.

I am so thankful for what God has done and how he has blessed our lives in this first decade of the 21st century.  At the same time I am looking forward to what he has for us in the next 10 years. It is so crazy to think that on this day 10 years from now my oldest daugther will have just completed her first semester of college.  The next ten years will be have their fair share of mountain tops as well as valleys, but regardless I know that God has every step and every day planned out!

Wishing everyone a very Happy New Year!  See you in 2011!

Whats Your Price?

“To achieve success, whatever the job we have, we must pay a price.” Vince Lombardi

Recently I have talked to or heard students saying that they just feel kind of plateaued in their spiritual walk and they just are not sure what they need to do to change things.  I believe Vince Lombardi summed things up very well in the above quote, If we want to acheive success we must be willing to pay a price. Every single one of us want something for our lives.  For some we want to be good at sports or for others its getting good grades its different for all of us, but deep down inside we all want to succeed at something.

When Meg and I were engaged I decided that I wanted to learn to play the guitar.  I was a youth pastor and thought that would be great to know how to play the guitar.  I talked Meg into buying me an acoustic guitar, case and a book to learn how to play.  I began to try and learn, but for anyone who knows how to play the guitar will tell you, at first it's pretty hard to learn.  I struggled to remember the different fingerings for all the different chords and I got extrememly frustrated.  I had thought in my mind that I would be playing worship songs within the first week.  Needless to say I wasn't and needless to say I never learned how to play. The main reason that I never learned how to play was that I wasn't willing to pay the price, I wasn't willing to do what needed to be done to learn how to play the guitar. 

Over my last 10+ years of youth ministry I have talked to student after student that at some point has become frustrasted with their walk with God.  Some really struggled with a particular sin, but not all, many of the students were just not willing to pay the price to go deeper.  I can make up all kind of excuses as to why I didn't learn to play the guitar, but when you boil it down, I simply wasn't willing to pay the price. 

Every person that is a Christ Follower wants to go deeper in their relationship with God.  The difference between those that do and those that don't is simple, those that do are willing to pay the price, they are willing to make the tough even unpopluar decisions.

So where are you? How is your relationship with God?  If you are feeling unfulfilled then begin to ask yourself, what am I willing to do to change? What price am I willing to pay to succeed?

 

Game Plan

I would normally start this entry saying something about how long it has been since I have done anything with my blog, but why state the obvious, so let me just jump right in!

The last month has been an incredible whirlwind.  Overseeing or doing a pretty major remodel project that started just before Thanksgiving and just concluded this past week.  Well, its not exactly completed, but all that is left are several small odd and end things.  Thanks to my good friend Shane, I didn't have to worry about speaking in Axiom.  He did a great job doing a series called, "The Gospel According to (Your Name Here)" based off the movie A Christmas Carol.  I am so thankful to have somone that does a great job communicating to our students so that the entire responsibility doesn't fall on my shoulders.  Needless to say, I am taking it easy this week spending time with the family and just trying to recharge my batteries. 

I have to admit I am really itching to start 2011!  Over the past 6 weeks I have really been contemplating and thinking alot about where Axiom is going and asking God what He wants us to focus on this year.  I have had the topic of my January series picked for a couple of months now, but this week God has really been putting all the pieces together for me. 

The series is going to be called "Game Plan." We are going to spend the month of January laying out the game plan for what I believe God wants to see happen in Axiom in 2011. I am so excited about this series and I am really excited about how we are going to be kicking it off on January 5th! You will NOT want to miss this service!

To prepare us for this series I am going to begin posting some quotes from some very famous and successful coaches!  Check back this week!